I Promise You'll Get Better

Six

A couple of hours later, Dashi, Koshi, Tweak and the cousins were all squished in Dashi's room, having just devoured a whole packet of marshmallows and feeling pretty high. Music was playing at a low volume through Dashi's sound system.

"So tell me about this band," Tweak said. "Dashi mentioned it once or twice..."

"Did she now?" Donna said. "You're referring to the utter chaos that called itself a band, I assume?"

"We weren't that bad!" Danielle said. "DeLana was just a little too enthusiastic on the drums."

"By enthusiastic, I think you mean skilled," DeLana retorted. "Dottie was worse on the keyboard."

"All those lines and dots and weird words on the sheet music didn't make any sense!" Dottie exclaimed. "How's an artist supposed to know what all that meant?"

"By asking me," Donna said. "You see, Tweak, I was the only one who sounded professional."

"In our defence, Daphne and I sounded pretty good on the electric guitar and the bass," Delilah huffed.

"We knew a lot of chords," Daphne agreed.

"You knew the A chord, the D chord and the B chord," Donna reminded.

"What did Danielle do?" Tweak asked.

"I was the manager and costume designer," Danielle said. "I'm hopeless at musical stuff."

"She was the only one who admitted she didn't have any musical talent," Donna said, patting her fellow cousin on the back. "The rest of them were determined we could form a proper band. They were also convinced they could use me to gain fame and fortune."

"Like being your backing band?" Koshi chuckled.

"Exactly," Donna said. "Needless to say, I told them there was no chance that they were going to back me on my next gig."

"It broke our hearts," Daphne said dramatically, placing a hand on our chest.

"It didn't," Danielle scoffed, diving into her bag and producing a large tin of cookies. "Deep down, we all knew it wasn't going to work out."

Dashi shook her head, swiping a cookie before anyone else could. "I got so many videos of them practising."

"You were very enthusiastic in your comments," Delilah grinned. "I think the 'please make it stop' along with the laughing emojis was the best one."

"Remember our outfits?" Dottie said.

"The really sparkly ones?" Danielle looked very pleased with herself. "I spent hours on them. I'm so glad Donna could use all of them for her gigs. It would've been a shame not to waste them... speaking of outfits..."

She turned to Tweak, who paled and buried herself into Dashi. Dashi giggled, removing herself from Tweak. "It'll be fine, Tweakster. Just a couple of outfits and then you're free to hide behind me for the rest of the sleepover. Or..."

She tapped her camera, which was sitting placidly on her bedside table. "I'm sure my cousins would love to see those mugshots that I took of you."

"Mugshots? What mugshots?" Tweak said, now clinging onto Koshi.

Dashi smiled amiably. "I'll delete the worst ones—if you go and let Danielle dress you up."

Tweak seemed to be having some sort of desperate internal fight. DeLana raised both her eyebrows at her younger cousin. "You're good, Dashi. Do you always blackmail your friends like this?"

"This isn't blackmail," Dashi said, leaning back. "It's called gentle persuasion."

Finally, Tweak got up so fast she nearly knocked over the tin of cookies. "Fine. But I'm warning you, if there's anything neon pink in there..."